New Delhi: BJP’s hyper animated TV face Sambit Patra will now contest from the beach city of Puri in Odisha. At the dead of the night, a little after 1 am, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released 36 names from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Assam and Meghalaya.

While a major chunk of the names are from Andhra Pradesh, six are from Maharashtra, five from Odisha and one each from Meghalaya and Assam. 

From Shillong, Meghalaya an ST seat is announced. MLA Shanbor Shullai is fielded from there by BJP. In Assam on the other hand, the sole seat declared from the third list was Tezpur. The seat has been given to Pallab Lochan Das, defying popular belief that Himanta Biwas Sharma could be fielded for the same. 

Andhra Pradesh: 23

Maharashtra: 6

Odisha: 5

Meghalaya: 1

Assam: 1

From Andhra Pradesh the 23 seats that were announced include Nellore, Kadapa, Kurnool, Aruku Vijaywada, Guntur etc. 

The meeting of the central election committee went on till 12 in the night which was followed by half an hour long one to one meeting between the Prime minister Narendra Modi and BJP president met Shah. The list was released little after 1 AM in the morning.

Apart from Modi and Amit Shah, the CEC meeting was attended by Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari.